


i just made a meal for us both to choke on

by liraels



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, It's Not Good, alternate s3 essentially, here is my excuse for this: i listened to a lot of fiona apple, it's their fucked dynamic on a plate and yet it is mostly inedible and likely poisoned, it's..........dark, or post 2x08
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:40:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26730784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liraels/pseuds/liraels
Summary: But there is that knife between them, always there is a knife. She could lean forward, pull Eve into her, impale herself on the blade just to taste her mouth. Her hands hover by Eve’s sides, ready. She relaxes her stomach muscles – stab wounds hurt less, that way. Less resistance.-Or: How to Get Over Your Ex in Ten Easy Steps.
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Comments: 76
Kudos: 169





	i just made a meal for us both to choke on

**Author's Note:**

> this is feral. enjoy

Villanelle finds the book in a second-hand shop in Florence. She buys it. She reads it. It is good, she thinks, the way it breaks things down. It all seems so achievable, stark and neat in black serif typeset, sprawled across well-thumbed pages.

Eve won’t know what hit her.

**_Step one: Cut off all contact._ **

Easy-peasy, she thinks, choke-and-squeezey. At least when your ex is dead.

Most likely dead, anyway. Villanelle is ninety-nine per cent sure. She has perfect aim and deserves some closure. She imagines the funeral – small, lonely. Her husband will not be in attendance. Eve’s parents, maybe, if they are still alive. A couple of work friends, a few from university. Carolyn standing over the casket, straight-backed and sharp-beaked, a watching vulture.

She imagines the coffin – smaller, lonelier still. They dress Eve in some conservative frock that does nothing for her but cover the bullet wound. An undertaker brushes her hair into knots and piles in too much spray so it falls flat, frizzed. Villanelle later kills the undertaker, or so she imagines. The disrespect.

She imagines the grave. The smallest and loneliest are six feet under.

All that is small and lonely aside, Eve got the better deal.

She is dead, she can basically sleep forever! She doesn’t have to wake in the morning with the taste of a rancid dream on her tongue, fucking herself into full consciousness. She doesn’t have to lie awake at night and hear her own breath in her ears, laboured, shuddering on the high of Eve on the other end of a taut line, listening, knowing.

She doesn’t have to build her days from the ground up, filling them with travelling, shopping, wandering, drinking, eating, picking up women. She doesn’t have to feel other people’s skin beneath her fingers, how they buck and twist in entirely the wrong way. She holds this one down by her shoulders and hisses forcefully, _Not like that_.

Eve would not kiss her like this, all gaping and careless, at least not until after she came and never before. She wouldn’t pull this faux escape act, not at first – only later, maybe, after the first few dozen times. She certainly wouldn’t gasp like that, almost a shriek, a pitiful, giving-in sort of sound. Don’t these women know anything?

But Eve – all Eve tastes is grave dirt and methanol. All she hears is clatter, clunk, shovel, earth. All she feels is her own hands, dead air. Villanelle is so merciful, so generous, really – it is the better deal.

A week goes by, and Villanelle almost forgets how Eve would say her name. She kills a man over it, as you do.

She is halfway to drunk and all of the way to delirium under pulsing lights, pulsing bodies. She thinks she sees Eve there, there, there again, even this man could be Eve until he speaks and it’s a bad pick-up line. Eve would never. She cannot flirt except in hard looks, harsher words, the nick of a blade. Could not flirt. Could not.

The attention is too easy, too shallow, too male. She kisses him up against the wall and tells him _Villanelle, you call me Villanelle_ – he chokes, _Villanelle_ and it’s wrong. Not least because he is a man. He skims over the syllables like they can’t hurt him, like the soft consonants are the still sea that won’t drown. He doesn’t own it. He doesn’t say her name like it’s his own, he doesn’t say it like Eve.

Her hand feels at home on his throat as she presses down. He chokes for real, now, he says _what_ , he says _no_ , he owns his sputtering and his escaping breath far better than he owned her name. This is what he deserves.

She leaves him slumped in the shadows behind the crowd of pumping feet.

The next, immediate task is extricating herself from Florence. Quickly, quickly, head down, onto the next town, but it’s all worth it because she hears Eve’s teeth scratch out that perfect _V_ sound, tongue licking around the vowels. _Villanelle_ , Eve says, and it rhymes with _you’re mine_.

**_Step two: Get rid of all physical reminders._ **

This one is straightforward. Villanelle made it a point to populate Eve’s life with pieces of her, each gift another drip between the eyes, carefully metered out to induce madness. Eve gave Villanelle nothing but heartache, and she already sent that back at bullet-speed.

She decides she’ll stop fucking women for their hair, though.

Okay, so, she lasts a day.

There is a woman in a bar in Bologna. She has beautiful hair. Villanelle tells her this. She tells her many other lies.

 _I like it soft_ , she tells her. _Slow. I’ll do you after._ She thinks about faking her orgasm, too, but then the woman tells her to come and she does, she does, excruciatingly, and Villanelle almost slaps her for it afterwards. Almost kills them both. Shuddering with anger instead of the other thing, not that this woman notices. She notices nothing. She cares even less than Villanelle, and Villanelle cares not at all, never has.

She is as rising sun, she is as rushing water; she cares not, wants not. This woman seems to think otherwise, which is wrong, dead fucking wrong. This woman is bossy, impatient, taking and using and it is wrong like a missed bullet that ricochets off old Roman stone, wrong like a glanced-off thrust that stabs the sheets and skewers the mattress.

She’s returning the favour, mind elsewhere, twisting a few thick strands of the woman’s hair around her finger ‘til the skin glows white from the second knuckle. It’s long enough, strong enough to strangle someone. She almost does.

It’s the last draw of a bad drug. After that, she follows step two. To the letter.

It doesn’t work. She has a mind to shred the book, to give up sex entirely, to jump off a fucking bridge. But not really. She has so much to live for.

The thing is, Eve is stubborn. She is persistent, determined, all of those objectively stupid, unintelligent ways to be. She insists on being everywhere, anywhere. In the ache of Villanelle’s wrist after she spends the morning touching herself and the afternoon practicing how many times she can stab a man before he dies. In the smooth silk of the new dress she buys herself, the velvet of a new suit, the lace of new lingerie. In her own eyes, in the silence of every hotel room, in the fucking sky – how did she get all the way up there?

Villanelle eats a lavish breakfast at a hotel in Venice, she thinks of Eve, she tags along on tours and learns how the place is sinking and history is dying, she thinks of Eve, she makes a tall blonde woman come six times in a row and each gasp makes her think of Eve and this book is fucking useless. But what else is she to do?

**_Step three: Make the most of your newfound freedom._ **

Dasha finds her in Milan. No, she hasn’t left Italy. Yes, it’s been months. Whatever, whatever, it is all so much whatever, even Dasha. Even returning to the Twelve, with the vague promise of career advancement. Whatever, whatever, Villanelle kills the new targets in earnest and with every spark of her usual style.

A few weeks in, she has a job in Edinburgh. Dasha says, _Make it fast. No distractions, no pissing about_.

Villanelle wonders what she means. She fears – she wonders.

She kills Edinburgh man with an axe, just for fun. More of a hatchet. But she still gets a kick out of it, leaves the haft sticking out of his shoulder as she leaves, and she leaves quickly and without pause for thought.

She fears, wonders.

_They tell me you take many lovers_ , Dasha says. _I think, this is good, she will be loose, light on her feet. And I see what?_

Villanelle kicks her feet up onto the arm of the couch, hiding Dasha’s puckered expression from view. Turns back to the television – some game show, it has money and a wheel and many stupid people who bet on losing. She watches it spin.

_I tell you what I see. I see you moping. I see a lazy potato. Do you think the Twelve want to promote a kicked puppy, to be Keeper?_

A kicked puppy, that’s a new one. She disagrees. She is a howl-at-the-moon sort of thing, if anything canine.

 _They told me not to mention Polastri woman_ , Dasha says, and Villanelle’s heart clenches. The wheel slows to a stop and she feels frozen with it. She wants to beat it out of her chest, beat it into spinning again. Beat it to a pulp. She doesn’t move, doesn’t answer.

_Are you listening to Dasha? They tell me, she is a problem for you, she is a distraction. Do not let Villanelle stray. You hear me? I break their rules because I care about you. Forget Polastri._

Dasha slaps the arm of the couch with finality. They spin the wheel again and Villanelle thinks perhaps she is not the outside of the wheel, fun and bright and rainbow, twirling about, covering ground. She is more like the centre, where the colours blur into grey and fall, sucked in, down and through and deep inside. Some centrifugal death trap. She is like nothing. She is spinning but she never moves an inch.

A postcard falls onto her chest and Dasha leaves in frustration. London. Villanelle thinks, present tense.

She fears. She wonders.

**_Step four: Exercise self-care._ **

Before she goes to London, she takes a bath. Incense, bath oil, rose petals, the works. She’s only ever bathed in luxury like this as an excuse to touch herself, or to touch others, but now she does neither. That wouldn’t be self-care, would it? Quite the opposite.

Bathing is boring, though. It bores like when the killing’s done, it bores like stuck teeth. It bores like everything else bores her, but worse because there is nothing to do but stare at dim light, slide soap against her skin. She floats sluggishly in the water. She runs the pads of her fingers from her toes to the tip of her head.

She can’t stand it. Needs to do something with her hands. With her head.

She abandons self-care, fuck the book.

Eyes closed, she finds Eve. As easy as slipping beneath the bathwater, slipping her hand between her legs, slipping under.

 _Eve_ , she says – no, be honest; she keens, whines, howls.

Eve is tight-lipped. All skin, hair, eyes – all human, alive, all very something.

 _Eve_ , she calls again, _say something, please_.

Eve makes her wait, and good for her. She’s writhing, almost in pain with it, when Eve finally says, _Stop_.

Naturally, she stops. The water stills, growing cold, tepid.

But once Eve starts, she cannot stop. She says, _I hate you._ Hisses, _I hate you._ Screams _, I hate you, I wish you were dead, I want to kill you, let me do it, let me do it to you._

Villanelle says, _Okay_. Maybe she pleads, maybe she cries, but no one will ever know this.

Villanelle says, _I wish you were dead, too_. And she thinks of postcards, she thinks of Big Ben and the London Eye and big red buses on glossy cardboard, she thinks _Dear Eve_ and _Love, V_ and she thinks, _I wish you were here_.

She takes a trip to Eve’s house, but of course it is no longer Eve’s house, because Eve is either dead or she is alive and not stupid.

She lies like a tortoise on her hotel bed and scrolls, searches, trawls through records. She finds Eve’s father, dead fifteen years. She finds Eve’s mother, alive, living outside of Bristol. She finds Eve’s aunt, running a mid-range Korean restaurant in New Malden. She doesn’t find an obituary, she doesn’t find any funeral.

She finds so much of Eve, so much she never knew, never asked, was never told, and she finds nothing of her at all.

She books in advance, a table for one. A hearty meal, that is self-care, they say. And following Eve’s trail – that’s self-care too, self-hatred in another measure, what’s the difference. She dresses up – in a _dress_ , no less, heels, makeup, does her hair in careful braids. She is taking herself on a date, as the book suggested.

So, it’s kind of also a date with Eve’s aunt – or an opportunity to prise out some information, whereabouts, a concrete answer to the question. Two birds, one stone, _splat_.

All the servers here have sleek, dark hair, and so does the woman who seems to own the place. Villanelle watches her flit in and out of the kitchen. Is there something of Eve in her, the shape of her cheeks, the purposeful gait? Maybe. Perhaps.

She eats well. Salty, filmy, sizzling and delicious. She pays in cash, and orchestrates a run-in with the owner on her way out the door.

 _Lovely food_ , she says brightly, indulgently. _My friend told me to come here, a relation of yours, I think. I will have to thank her for the recommendation._

_A relation? Who is your friend?_

_Oh, her name’s Eve. Maybe a distant relation,_ she adds slyly, _sorry to bother –_

But the woman’s eyes light up, she smiles wide. Eve never smiled like that. Villanelle is doubting genetics more and more. _Eve! You are Eve’s friend! She is not working today, but you will come back! See her when she is working?_

Thunderclap. Villanelle rests the tip of her tongue on her bottom lip to stop herself from sinking her teeth into it. A muscle in her eyelid is twitching, she wants to yank it out, she wants to slice off her own kneecaps to stop them from wobbling. _I would love to_ , she says. _When does she work?_

 _From opening time,_ the woman replies enthusiastically, _until three_. _Every weekday. But you must come tomorrow, okay? I didn’t know she had friends. You must come to see her, she will love it._

She thinks Eve will not love it, not at all. But she says, _Of course. Any excuse for another wonderful meal. Thank you for your hospitality._ And she leaves a mammoth tip.

She kills the target the next morning at dawn, in his own bed. Shoots him in his sleep. His eyes are closed and she doesn’t open them, doesn’t look into them once. He could still be alive, if not for the red flowering across white sheets.

She eats her meal first. Tells Eve’s aunt, _Please, I will wait until she is on break. I wouldn’t want to intrude._ And is met with no protest because she tips in advance, shoving a fifty pound note in the jar at the counter.

She is ravenous. Hot oil slicks her fingers and she sucks them, licking sauce from the soft skin between. The thick taste coats her tongue, her teeth, down her gullet. She imagines kissing Eve with this mouth, hot, cloying like mud. Like quicksand.

She takes her time. The place is slow at lunchtimes, and it is Eve’s aunt who serves her.

 _I told her you were coming_ , she says, clearing away Villanelle’s plates and refilling her water.

_Is that right? What did you say about me?_

_Oh, you know. That her young lady friend was eager to see her. That you loved the dumplings she made!_

_Ah, yes. They were delicious._

The woman beams. Villanelle smiles back, fighting the urge to retreat, showing off the strings of meat still stuck between her teeth.

_Hi, Eve._

It is only natural, for their reunion to take place on either side of a knife. Eve must have brought it with her into the little courtyard, she prepared, she knew Villanelle was coming! She mustn’t have any other young lady friends.

Villanelle hasn’t felt this alive in months. She hasn’t thought this much about dying in months. She can’t stop thinking about kissing her, that’s the only thing that never changes.

Eve is saying something, hissing, shaking and flailing about – the only steady centre is the grip of her right hand, and the blade protruding from it. Anchoring them both.

A butcher’s knife. Not subtle, certainly not sexy. Eve, please. 

_– I cannot_ believe _this,_ Eve is saying like a whirlwind, in that careless manner she tosses out words so some stick and some pierce and this way Eve gets every incompatible thing she wants at once. _Why can’t you get the fuck out of my life? Why can’t you leave me alone? You left me for dead, why don’t you go and live with that? Does it fucking hurt too much? Why can’t you just leave me dead?_

Villanelle says, _I don’t like your choice of weapon. It is not very erotic_.

Eve is an eruption. _Shut up! Why shouldn’t I kill you now? I could do it. You were always wrong about that._

Villanelle doesn’t doubt it now. Tiny bit sexy, maybe, even the butcher’s knife. _I think your aunt would lose a lot of business_ , she says, _and I think you would lose, too._

_I think I’d lose sleepless nights. I’d lose the hole in my chest. That’s not losing._

Villanelle thinks, again about kissing her. Her lips are a little chapped. Inviting. Villanelle would taste awfully delicious: garlic, umami, strangled want, a real flavour combination. She could nibble at that dry skin ‘til it tore open. This time, Villanelle would stay to watch Eve bleed. She would kiss it off. She would do that for her and much besides.

But there is that knife between them, always there is a knife. She could lean forward, pull Eve into her, impale herself on the blade just to taste her mouth. Her hands hover by Eve’s sides, ready. She relaxes her stomach muscles – stab wounds hurt less, that way. Less resistance.

Eve steps back just in time, or just slightly too early. She is an earthquake waiting to happen. _Go die somewhere else, Villanelle. I won’t do it for you. I won’t give you anything you want, ever. Go fall on someone else’s sword this time. Every time. It will never be me. Never again._

**_Step five: Make plans with friends and family._ **

_Why do you miss Russia?_ she asks casually. _Don’t you know what it’s like, now? It’s basically America-lite._

Dasha snorts around her bite of salad. She eats like she’s still an Olympic gymnast.

 _What,_ Villanelle persists, _you have family there? There must be something better than shiny medals._

_Of course, I have family there. And so do you._

_They’re dead._

_Eh. Not all of them, maybe. You probably have some snot-nosed cousins left over, stinking up whatever hovel you grew up in._

_Maybe,_ Villanelle considers. _Should I go visit?_

_Only if you bring back some proper vodka for Dasha._

She sneers, tossing down her burger. She eats sporadically, lately. She can’t finish it. _In that case, I won’t go_ , she says. _It will teach you to be a snob. Nobody likes their family, anyway. Not normal people.  
_

Konstantin is who-knows-where, who-knows-when, these days, but he answers her call.

 _Long time, no see_ , she observes archly. And then, considerably less archly: _I missed you._

 _Don’t do that_ , he says. Gruff, as is his way. _Don’t miss me_.

 _But I do_ , she insists. She does. What else is she to name this hole, who else could she be missing? It can’t be Eve – Villanelle is on step five, she is halfway to getting over her.

_Don’t. I won’t be around much longer._

_You are planning your funeral? Oh, Konstantin. Am I invited?_

_No. I am planning something else._ He laughs his frog-like laugh. _But_ _I might die trying. Of course you are invited. You sit in the front row. You even get a plus one._

Villanelle doesn’t know what to say to that. She fears, wonders, what Konstantin knows.

He stops laughing. _I told you she was making you weak. But that is not a bad thing._

He is wrong. It is the worst thing. She loves, craves it, can’t be without it, but it’s the pits. It’s her own sword she’s falling on, take _that_ , Eve.

 _I’m happy for you,_ Konstantin says, and once again Villanelle wonders what he knows. Clearly not everything. Nobody here is happy – not her, not Eve, certainly. Someone has been lying to him. She picks up the thread.

 _I_ am _happy_ , she tells him. _We are finding each other again. It is good. It will be good._

 _Good,_ Konstantin says, and it is the last thing he will ever tell her before he is gone – gone to his something-else or otherwise dead in the attempt. _You need someone to look after you when I leave._

And after everything, Villanelle still wants to hurt her.

If she is as evil as they say, that is why. It isn’t the murder, it isn’t the way she picks people up by their spines just to watch the way they dance, it isn’t the dearth of remorse. All these things are forgiven, she forgives herself.

Except – not that.

She dreams as she used to, about Eve’s hair tangled in her fist. About desperate cries, hard and fast, green-blue bruises, blood on linen. She dreams the opposite, too, and just as often, but that’s catharsis. Eve drags nails down her thighs, sinks knuckles into her cheek, and throws her, bends her, upends her, and it’s all basically therapy.

She wakes on the odd mornings with a smile on her lips, cradling herself, conjuring pain in order to ease it. She wakes on the even mornings in a maim-fog, hurricane-fog, use-an-axe-to-dig-out-her-own-brains-type-fog. There are things that are unchangeable – death is one of them, pain is another, maybe hurricanes, too, and _Eve_ , all natural disasters. The will to hurt is just another tick on that list. 

If she has a job on those even-numbered days, she kills them extra nicely. A bullet to the back of the head. Quick knife to the throat, basically painless. She takes the clog in her chest and chokes it up and then eats it again, forces it down. She thinks it might be guilt. It tastes fucking awful.

If she doesn’t have a job, she stays in. She fucks herself – and this is why she lets her nails grow out just a little too much – or she finds someone to do it for her. She growls at Dasha when she comes around and she tries on all her clothes, decides she likes none of them, throws them away and falls into a fitful sleep on the couch, naked.

And she dreams of Eve. Of hurting again or, if she is lucky, of being hurt.

 _It will never be me_ , the dark whispers, cool on her bare skin. _Never again._

On the even days, she believes it.

**_Step six: Remind yourself of their faults._ **

It’s been too long since she’s given Eve a gift. It’s also been too long since she’s broken into Eve’s home, given her a good scare, rearranged her furniture.

She might miss the good old days, it’s quite possible.

Eve’s new flat is a mess. It looks how Villanelle feels these days, it looks how Eve looks. She almost trips on the pile of discarded clothes at the front door. The carpet has almost certainly never been vacuumed. Plates in the sink, some moulding cereal. Does she even live here?

But she does. Used cotton wool balls all over the floor, food wrappings, dirty clothing. Last week’s unwashed sheets twisted between the bed and the wall. Eve is disgusting. Eve is seriously not okay.

It’s one of the odd days, thank god. She’d let Eve press her into this unmade bed and make her come without washing her hands first. It’s shocking how little she cares for anything, for everything.

She cleans the kitchen. She mops the floors. Knocks on the neighbour’s door and asks so sweetly to borrow their vacuum cleaner. Takes three separate trips down to the laundromat. Eve is the worst, she reminds herself. No sense of proper hygiene. She delicately skirts around the fact that she hasn’t touched so much as a broom in her own house, hires other people to do it for her. Eve is the worst. These are her faults, her many, many flaws.

She is feeling unexpectedly satisfied, almost good, when she finishes. The tiny flat is less pigsty, more cosy. Like it could be shared.

Villanelle only realises how dearly she’s lost track of time when a key rattles in the door. She’s leaping into the hallway – perhaps to deadlock the door, shut the monsters out – when it opens. And they are face to face, too close, too far away.

Eve blinks. _You’ve broken my lock_.

 _Oh_ , Villanelle says stupidly. _But I did your washing_.

 _Oh_. An echo. _Thank you._

Villanelle thinks – not in her brain but in her stomach, somewhere vulnerable and close – she thinks, Hello. Hello, Eve. I love you. I want you to be happy. I want you to be safe. I want you to have clean sheets and fresh food and nice clothes that fit you well, I want you in my arms, I want you warm, I want you laughing, I want you free again. I love you, I love you, I’d wash a thousand sheets for you on days like this, I’d crawl here from Barcelona, I’d drag myself on my stomach over dirt and asphalt and under sea just to recycle your used milk cartons, I’d tear myself into ribbons, I’d do anything, anything, I’d do anything to love you except – except love you.

She says, _Goodbye_ , and she leaves. Eve doesn’t return the farewell, but Villanelle swears she watches her all the way down the hall until she descends the stairs, glaring fixedly at her own feet and out of Eve’s sight.

**_Step seven: Find a new hobby._ **

She tries watercolours. Blegh.

She tries crochet. Double blegh.

She actually skydives, just the one time. Waste of money. If you want to feel like you’re going to die, just fucking wake up in the morning. If you want to feel like you’re falling, just fall in and out of love with Eve Polastri. You won’t even have to wear a parachute.

Eve finds her, because that is what she does.

 _We need your help_ , is what she starts with. Not even a hello. It’s a lucky thing Villanelle’s heard Eve’s voice every day since Rome, in some phantom or other, otherwise she wouldn’t recognise it now.

 _We?_ Villanelle cradles the phone, warm against her cheek. She imagines nothing, pictures nothing.

_Carolyn. There’s some – some new guys on the job, too…_

_Ah_ , she says, _the royal we. Are you calling on Carolyn’s behalf, or do_ you _–_ she manages to hiss this part, emphasis on you – _need my help too?_

Eve huffs. Villanelle doesn’t imagine it, doesn’t picture it. _Don’t be fucking smart with me. Look. Something happened. A while ago, now, but figuring out the Twelve is more important than ever and we’re getting nowhere._

 _Okay, Eve._ Emphasis on Eve. Emphasis on okay. _What do you want?_

_Information. The Twelve. Names, locations, movements. Whatever you can give us._

_You want me to be your double agent._

_Informant. Yes, whatever._

Villanelle taps, taps on the back of the phone. _Sounds dangerous._

_It is. Come to London as soon as you can._

_I didn’t say yes._ Emphasis on I.

 _Yes, you did,_ Eve says, no emphasis. Matter-of-fact.

Okay, so her new hobby is betrayal. She is practiced at it, according to Eve, who greets her with a grunt and an automatic _how was your flight_ , but it isn’t a question. Eve never asks questions.

This is something Villanelle has noticed, though it took her a while, in between all the killing and fucking and nothing she’s been doing. Eve says _I want to know everything_ , but has she ever asked, even once? She’ll expect, she’ll stay silent, she’ll drag out the irons, she’ll cut straight to torture before she just asks the damn question.

So Villanelle doesn’t answer. It is fun, the games they play.

Carolyn acknowledges her with a cursory nod. Not even a hello, where is the British politeness? And the others – they are very men. Very scared. Is it so hard to get a _how are you_ around here?

I mean, she agrees to it all, anyway. Wonders fleetingly if she has a death wish. Forgets that, forgets all of it, when she sees the look on Eve’s face as she tells them _Yes_ – you could stop traffic with that look. You could soak up spilt milk with that look. Villanelle doesn’t know what it means, but – something. Something.

She goes to intercept Eve as things wrap up, but she’s perfected a kind of slipperiness. Gone in the space of a blink. Falls through Villanelle’s fingers like water. Like spilt milk.

**_Step eight: Work on improving yourself._ **

Eve is Villanelle’s confidant, of course, because the others are terrified and Carolyn is above it all. Eve is both those things, too, but she also hates herself, which is the important thing.

When Villanelle has an even-numbered day – a hurting dream – it smarts less of guilt, now, and more of loathing. Foaming, bristling hate; she knows it too. She wants to tell Eve this, watching her every time they part, spine drooping, sucking on a cigarette, wearing the same clothes as yesterday.

Maybe they’d each harbour less hatred if they knew how much the other one had in store. In absolute spades. Oh, she makes no sense anymore, not even to herself. Least of all to herself. She thinks things and she ponders them and she wakes up, lies there, kills someone, goes home, fucks herself, passes out, forgets all of it only to re-tread her drunken steps the very next day. Sometimes she sees Eve in between and this only makes things worse. Sometimes she sees Eve and she forgets whether the day is odd or even, so she digs her hole deeper anyway, just to be safe.

If losing yourself is improving yourself then, well. The ten easy steps are going remarkably well.

_You swear a lot, lately, Eve_ , Villanelle tells her one afternoon. They meet somewhere different every time – sometimes she goes to London, sometimes elsewhere and Eve comes to her and they sit in a dingy café or a lonely park and they talk. They talk about nothing at all. Names, dates, places, motives. Nothing about themselves. Nothing about each other. As she said, nothing at all.

Villanelle crosses her legs, dropping an arm behind the back of the park bench, in Eve’s space. She says, _I never heard you say fuck until after Rome._

Eve raises her chin. _Yeah, well. Fuck you._

_Do you mean that literally?_

Here is where Eve shakes her head for the millionth time, pulls out the millionth cigarette and shuffles the millionth boring file between her stiff, frozen hands. Villanelle could warm them up, if she were agreeable. They would fit between her own hands easily.

She doesn’t. She lets one fist fall casually over her own knee, the other floating threateningly behind Eve’s back. Lolls her head to the side, asks, _Is that how you think of it, Eve, when you think of it? Do you think about fucking, do you think about being fucked, do you –_

_I think about fucking shooting you in the head, that’s what I think about._

_Really? Maybe you used to think of it as making love. Did you, with Niko? Or sleeping together, but that’s boring, I’ve always thought. If it’s really good, there’s not much sleeping._

_Do you have anything else for me? Or are you just going to dick around all afternoon? I have to get home._

Oh, Eve, no. She has nothing else. They have bled her dry, doesn’t Eve see it? She’ll die soon. The Twelve aren’t stupid. She’ll be murdered, dead in her bed before she knows it and Eve will wait at the next park, at the next café and no one will come. Or, maybe someone will come, to put a bullet through Eve’s chest, but it won’t be Villanelle this time. Or any time.

It’s cruel, she thinks, so cruel, that she should be dead before she’s killed.

**_Step nine: Reflect on and evaluate the relationship._ **

This time, they meet in a hotel room.

 _I hope you don’t mind_ , Eve says, shrugging self-consciously. _It’s cold out and_ _I can’t deal with people today_.

 _Am I not people?_ Villanelle asks daringly.

_Yes. No, I don’t know._

Eve stares, studies. Her eyes grow wide and Villanelle knows – it’s the first time they’ve been alone together, in private, since those five odd seconds in the doorway of Eve’s flat. Before that, since Rome.

Neither of them stand a chance.

Eve kisses like she knows what it feels like to die.

In the pull of her lips, her teeth, there is morbid, cosmic knowledge. And what do you know; Eve does kiss like that, all gaping and careless, and they’ve barely even started. It’s reassuring. It’s dooming, damning.

Villanelle kisses back, matches it, because she knows it too. She’s killed them both, good fucking job.

 _On the chair_ , Eve gasps out, pushing weakly at Villanelle’s shoulders. _Get down on the – chair_.

Eve is right. There is a beautiful queen-sized bed just feet away, but who deserves it? Not her. Not them. The wall would be more suitable, the floor, even. Who gives a fuck. Who cares! She laughs, tossing herself backwards into the armchair, pulling Eve with her by her wrists. Eve falls atop her like it isn’t unnatural, like it hasn’t taken every spare inch of them to get here, like they didn’t burn themselves down for fuel, like they’re more than acrid smoke.

And Eve kisses her. And Eve touches her. And maybe she will spontaneously combust right here, clink with the steel and whoosh with the flint and she’ll be ashes beneath Eve’s thighs, god bless. Farewell. Good riddance.

But in the end – she doesn’t combust. The chair digs into Villanelle’s spine and the front of Eve’s thighs and they move to the bed after all; down pillows, 2000-thread count, after-dinner-mints. Softly, softly. It never hurts, not once, and she’ll die about that later.

Eve says, _Villanelle_ , and not like she owns it, but it’s music regardless. She’s never understood classical music, but she likes the word _symphony_ , it’s almost as good as _Villanelle_ , the three-syllable words. _Po-la-stri_. And it’s a symphony, Eve makes it so. Eve makes everything. Eve gives and takes and talks and mutters and groans and whispers and it wasn’t supposed to be like this, not ever, not in a single one of her dreams, but Eve makes it so. Villanelle lets her.

**_Step ten: Give yourself permission to move on._ **

****

****

She’s not been doing too badly so far, she thinks, at these steps. One through nine ticked off the list and she is cruising.

Step ten is proving…difficult.

Not just difficult, she realises and it’s like a cold bullet, splintering when it hits bone. Not just difficult; impossible.

 _Impossible_. Like painlessness, like living forever, like peace, like all the things no one ever gets but they all want – even Villanelle, despite popular belief, despite her own belief, because _never again_. It’s impossible, like maybe she’ll kill herself first. Maybe she’ll kill Eve, properly this time, shoot her in the heart, in the head, snap her neck like a normal fucking person. Maybe she’ll kill everyone else by one by one by one and she’ll string them up for Eve to see, for Eve’s eyes to glaze over and fall upon Villanelle, maybe they’ll slot into vicious lockstep only when they’re the last two predators on earth. The last two prey. Maybe only then, and it’ll still be just as impossible when there’s two people left alive as it is now when there’s seven and a half billion.

Billions, she tells herself, she scratches at herself, she makes herself ache. Don’t you know there’s _billions_? And they all bleed the same, the saying goes. And what does it matter.

She texts Eve – encrypted line, she isn’t stupid, she knows there is an axe hanging over her head –

_meet me tomorrow?_

_not for work._

_For what?_

_for me._

Eve’s response is almost too late for Villanelle to book a flight as well as to undertake all those necessary steps to obscure her comings and goings from an increasingly suspicious Dasha and a suspiciously silent Twelve. But it comes, finally. Just in time.

_Where?_

_Hi_ , says Eve.

Villanelle looks at her. And she looks at her, looks at her more. _Hi_.

 _How are you?_ Eve asks, and Villanelle nearly chokes on it. The care, the – fuck. Put it away, Eve. None of that here. None of that, ever.

But – _How are you?_ she returns, and it sounds just the same. Nobody answers the question.

Eve sits. They watch the dancers – all of them practiced, man-woman couples, most of them old.

_Why did you want to meet?_

To end it, she should say. To give us both permission. To move on. The book was very clear about this. She shrugs. _Do you dance, Eve?_

_No. Never._

_Me, neither. Would you like to?_

_I –_ and Eve is going to say no. She is going to walk out of here and they will both move on, and it will be good, it will be cathartic, it will be an ending. They will live better lives from here on out. Eve says, haltingly, _I would. I think I would._

God damn it, Eve. God damn it. God damn them.

Eve would like to, and Eve gets what she wants or the world burns down. So they dance.

They are not good at it, not at all. Villanelle’s toes will ache in the morning. But somehow, Eve settles into leading them and Villanelle settles into her. Close. Maybe too close. Her bones ache, her stomach is liquid, hot ash. They dance the only way they know how.

Villanelle gulps, swallows, forces her throat to work. First, she has something to say.

 _What is it?_ Eve asks, pre-empting, her hand gripping Villanelle’s just a little bit tighter. She’s not wearing her wedding ring.

 _They will come for me_ , Villanelle says, softly into her hair, beneath the swell of music. _And soon. Maybe they already know. Maybe I will not get home tonight. I just wanted to let you know._

Eve sways them onwards in silence for a while. Then, she says, and it seems to take all of her to say it, every last molecule straining against her deepest instincts, _Kiss me, first, will you?_

Villanelle does.

She pulls back and one of them is crying. She cannot tell which.

Eve murmurs brokenly, _You did it so softly_.

_I did. I’m sorry._

_I don’t know…_ Eve trails off. The song changes, and maybe the jauntier music builds her will because she tries again: _I don’t know what we are if you won’t hurt me_ , she says, _if I won’t hurt you._

 _But I_ – Villanelle gulps down bile, burning. _But I want to hurt you. Still. I’d kill you otherwise._

_You would?_

_I would. I really would. I’m sorry._

_Don’t be. Don’t cry –_ And this is strange, she is definitely not crying, what is that about – _Don’t be, okay?_

 _Okay,_ she says, because she is not the one crying, she cannot be. That would not be right. _Eve_ , she says, and Eve nods, smiles, and it is nothing like her dreams and she cannot tell if the day is odd or even and – and the chances are seven billion to one but Villanelle will take them any day. She’ll take them.

They sway. Eve leads.


End file.
